When DW has to do her public disclosure, the house is part of NW. But for retirement planning, we don't count it. It is like my gun collection. You could pay the electric bill by selling one a month for seven or eight years, but it is something I don't want to start anytime soon. In fact, I don't see myself not adding to it every birthday for the next ten or fifteen years.

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I track two AAs, one for total investments (this is the one useful for retirement) and then total net worth which includes the home & material goods. Cash flow in/out is also very important when it comes to thinking about retirement so I track that too.

Mostly I was just wondering if there are any "rules of thumb" ratios between the two different classes. You hear about % of mortgage compared to salary, or the UAW/PAW ratios from Stanley's Millionaire Mind...and I'm sure there are others. I guess another way of saying it would, how much "stuff" (including home), which generally goes down in value rather than up, vs how much "nvestments. On this board and the MMM people are of course all about maximizing growing assets over consumption. But I hadn't seen any kind of analysis of what is a typical ratio.

Mostly I was just wondering if there are any "rules of thumb" ratios between the two different classes. You hear about % of mortgage compared to salary, or the UAW/PAW ratios from Stanley's Millionaire Mind...and I'm sure there are others. I guess another way of saying it would, how much "stuff" (including home), which generally goes down in value rather than up, vs how much "nvestments. On this board and the MMM people are of course all about maximizing growing assets over consumption. But I hadn't seen any kind of analysis of what is a typical ratio.

The LBYM answer is spend as little on "stuff" including your home as you can comfortably stand. That means the answer is very personal indeed.

Before I was married, my salary went basically a third to various taxes, a third for the future, and a third for now. Your preferences may be different, but getting to FI status was a high priority for me. Thus my ratio of investment portfolio to stuff grew every year until the volatility of my portfolio exceeded a third of my salary.

I kind of like the classic advice rarely followed these days that your home should cost at most 2 to 3 years of salary. Approximating with the 4% rule, that would imply your home's value should be roughly 8% to 12% of your portfolio's value, assuming you are retired with no other income streams.

If you put your investments in buckets to satisfy different spending categories, allocating basically the same amount to your home costs bucket as your home would sell for is another very rough rule of thumb.

Though it can be broken, a classic rule is that a luxury once sampled becomes a necessity. You can think about all purchases as not just the up front single purchase cost, but as what would it cost to use/maintain/replace this new luxury for the rest of my life in dollars/year? For example that new iPhone needs a wireless plan, and the phone itself will need to be replaced periodically. Using a 4% withdrawal rate as a rough approximation, how much portfolio would I need to produce that many dollars/year?

Until retirement, then calculate that using my current salary, how much of my time is needed to save that much money? Is this new luxury worth that much of my life? If yes, buy it now. If no, then reject or defer the purchase for later reconsideration. Basically, is this luxury worth deferring my retirement?

Once retired, you look at your current withdrawal rate, decide if it is below your personal maximum safe withdrawal rate guess, if so you can buy the new luxury because you have the spare cash. Basically, you are on a "fixed" income buddy, you can buy it if you can afford it forever.

The other alternative before and after retirement is to convince yourself you can eliminate some existing luxury with the same or greater cost as the new luxury, allowing you to swap luxuries.

In the end your investment portfolio to "stuff" ratio is a lifestyle choice, heavily dependent on what kind of "stuff" you like, how optimistic you are, what if any other income streams you have, how LBYM you want to be, how close you are to FIRE, and how much you like to w@rk.

I guess another way of saying it would, how much "stuff" (including home), which generally goes down in value rather than up, vs how much "nvestments.

Except for the RE crash years, a reasonably well located home plus lot would have had to suffer very bad luck to lose money.

It isn't very hard to figure out how your city is going to do, and it isn't very hard to pick the better districts of your city.

You don't want more home than your retirement assets can easily support, but more than one family or couple have been priced out of an area where they wanted to be. Since I would experience serious quality of life losses if I had to move somewhere cheaper, I elected to buy and my anxiety level dropped meaningfully. I did not want to move to the burbs or worse yet to another part of the country, if we got a hot real estate market. OTOH, I figured that at the cost level at which I was entering, losses would have little risk for me. My condo would rent at a good cash profit, so the only thing that might negatively impact me would be an important regional business recession.

Ha

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Except for the RE crash years, a reasonably well located home plus lot would have had to suffer very bad luck to lose money.

Ha

There have been many exceptions to that over past 10-15yrs particularly after including the ongoing costs of mortgage, taxes, insurance, upkeep, periodic renovations, etc. While most markets have stabilized recently, there are lots of nice properties in major markets which are still badly underwater vs 5-10yrs ago.
I've come to view a home as a stable place to live in the area of my choosing. Any investment gain would be a bonus.

Except for the RE crash years, a reasonably well located home plus lot would have had to suffer very bad luck to lose money.

It isn't very hard to figure out how your city is going to do, and it isn't very hard to pick the better districts of your city.

Agree completely. Our area never lost more than 20% in value even during the crash. Much of this stability was due to the "enlightened" (okay, maybe lucky) lending practices locally. "No doc" and other high-risk loans were rarely offered, so the cascade effects seen in other areas never materialized when the market got a little soft. Also, by being a very desirable area where "they aren't making any more land", prices have a natural "stability" built in. This has played out over many cycles in the past.

We were able to play the system to an extent and trade "up", locally. Our old area lost about 10% during the crash while our current area lost about 20%. Now, prices have rebounded to near pre-crash levels, so we "made" money (if we were to sell).

Having said all that, I still don't think of the home as an investment. Neither do I look at it as just an expense. It's sort of a "neutral" item that has characteristics of both. I don't look at it as part of the AA, but I certainly look at it as an asset which adds stability to the FIRE plan.

To the OP's question about a "rule of thumb", respectfully, I don't see that as being very useful - assuming that investable assets and other sources of income allow one to live in one's chosen abode without fear of running out of money. So, if half one's assets are in a house and the other half generate more than enough money to keep one IN that house, who cares about the percentages of total assets? Just my opinion, so YMMV.

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Thanks for the great discussion everyone. From reading the links it seems like my home value is within a typical range. And since the home is generally the largest priced "stuff", that's a good one to look at.

I agree that it doesn't really matter-- but having too large a home (and other "stuff") would delay early retirement (the focus of this forum) since one would then need to work longer to have the cash flow to support it (or to purchase it).

Another interesting data point would be the spending patterns of those who successfully retire early vs. those who don't and perhaps even how it relates to work/retirement timing. That is, total spent on stuff vs investments, as compared to # of working years.

When DW has to do her public disclosure, the house is part of NW. But for retirement planning, we don't count it. You could pay the electric bill by selling one a month for seven or eight years, but it is something I don't want to start anytime soon. In fact, I don't see myself not adding to it every birthday for the next ten or fifteen years.

I think you should take the equity in the house and in other real estate (vacation house, farm, etc) into account in retirement planning.
I recently decided to withdraw 10% of my retirement assets to pay off a mortgage. It made sense to me because it reduces my expenses, and also because interest rates on retirement funds invested for safety are very low. Now some would say that my farm and house are not very liquid, so why consider them to be retirement assets if you won't sell. Well, we will sell the farm at some point, and as far as the house goes, it's value will become available to pay for assisted living/nursing home care should that become necessary.
The objective of my retirement planning is to maintain my spending with minimal risk of running out before I die. Firecalc says no problem, unless I live to 95, or the future is worse than the past. But before I hit 95 I would expect to either sell the house or (should I be healthy enough to stay there) I could take out a reverse mortgage if returns on my portfolio have been disappointing. If I were renting these options would not be available to me and I would have to count on spending less from my retirement assets each year.

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